Founded in 2001, StoredIQ offers e-discovery systems that help organizations index, store, de-duplicate and delete their unstructured data. The process, which IBM calls information lifecycle governance, can help organizations comply with regulations, respond to litigation and cut storage costs by reducing data volume.

StoredIQ is the latest in a number of acquisitions IBM has made in the information management space. IBM purchased e-discovery vendor PSS Systems in 2010 and enterprise search vendor Vivisimo in 2012. IBM will fold StoredIQ into its software group, and will offer StoredIQ software as part of its Information Lifecycle Governance portfolio.

StoredIQ is a privately held company based in Austin, Texas, and has over 120 enterprise customers worldwide, including companies in the financial services, health care, government and manufacturing industries.

Because StoredIQ's architecture allows the software to run across multiple servers, it could manage petabytes worth of information. Because of this distributed capability, the company has recently rebranded itself as a big data vendor. The company also claims its systems can be installed and configured quickly, in hours rather than months that it says other e-discovery packages can take. StoredIQ delivers its software either on servers or in virtual containers.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM expects to complete the acquisition within the first three months of 2013.

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